The present invention relates to support racks for clothing, and, more particularly, to a collapsible garment support rack for transportation of a plurality of garments disposed on hooked garment hangers in a cargo container.
When clothing, such as shirts, jackets, coats, trousers or the like are manufactured, typically fabric is shipped to a factory, the garments are sewn, or otherwise assembled, and then transported to distributors on hangers for distribution to retail stores. Currently, finished garments are typically shipped in conventional semi trailers or, for off-shore manufacturing, in cargo containers which are typically rectangular box-like containers configured for shipment in ships and adaptable for disposition on rail cars or on flat-bed trailers to form a cargo trailer similar to semi trailers. In any event, the conventional method for stowing and positioning the garments within the cargo container is to suspend a plurality of ropes from the trailer ceiling to extend, typically, to the floor of the trailer. A series of knots is formed in each rope and garments disposed on conventional hooked garment hangers are suspended from the knots in groups. This method keeps the clothing off of the floor of the container yet offers little else in the way of garment protection. Garments are clustered around the knots in bunches, and often some garments will fall to the floor of the cargo container, resulting in wrinkles, soiling or damage to the garment. Therefore, upon arrival, the garments must typically be cleaned and pressed before they will be accepted and sold in commerce. This cleaning and pressing adds significantly and unnecessarily to the cost of garment manufacture.
Typically, the cargo container will be returned to the factory with a load of raw materials for a return trip to the garment manufacturer, and the ropes can interfere with such return shipments, even with the ropes pushed aside or tied to a support within the trailer.
Therefore, it is desirable to ship the garments on a support rack in a condition which would not require cleaning and pressing on arrival, wherein the rack can be easily disassembled once garments are removed from the cargo container for return shipment of the disassembled rack to the manufacturer in the cargo container, sharing the space with the aforesaid raw materials.